Moto Z Play Review: 8-Cores And Insane Battery Life

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Moto Z Play: Battery Life & Conclusion

Virtually all smartphones on the market could benefit from better battery life. However, there's always a trade-off between performance and power consumption. To discern how the Moto Z Play compares to other smartphones phones with respect to battery life, we ran it through AnTuTu Tester's Battery test, a high-load benchmark that aims to drain the battery in a device as quickly as possible. The test sets the display brightness to high and cranks up workloads for the processor, graphics core, and memory, and runs through a number of real-world scripted workloads as well, including web browsing, gaming and video playback.

Battery Life

How Long Did They Last?

Hear that? That's the sound of a Moto mic drop. The Moto Z Play doesn't just have good battery life, it makes you wonder if any other phone actually has a battery in it. It stands in a class all of its own, at least as far as this test is concerned. We started this test at 7:45am. At 5:00pm the benchmark was still running - maxed out brightness, sound playing, and under multimedia load. All told, we scored over 12 hours of up-time for that run before it finally gave in.

This is a phone that regularly offers ten or more hours of screen-on time with moderate to heavy usage. If, for some reason, that isn't enough battery life to satiate you, you can always equip the Incipio OffGrid Power Pack for an extra 2,220mAh of juice. You may just forget what a charger looks like with this phone.

Moto Z Play Assessment And Conclusion

Whether Lenovo intended this or not, we feel they saved the perhaps most compelling Moto Z family member for last. The Moto Z Play is a phone that simply works for you. Even if you don't ever need to touch a Moto Mod, this phone delivers a compelling experience.

The Moto Z Play is a testament to a well-optimized software package. Yes, it has a more moderate Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 system on a chip inside. However, the Moto team holds close to stock Android. Animations are fluid and the interface does not stutter. Applications launch quickly and the core experience is all about functionality with Moto Actions providing a very natural means to improve user experience.

The real kicker, though, is the obscene battery life this phone delivers. This is the standard all smartphones ought to be held to. Moto hasn't packed in anything revolutionary either. A 3,510mAh battery is hefty but by no means excessive or unusual. However, pairing it with a 1080p Super AMOLED display and low power Snapdragon 625 processor really enables this device to go the distance.

Sure, it doesn't have the glitz and glam of a Samsung Galaxy S7 and other superphones, but it isn't priced in the same ballpark either. At $449, the Moto Z Play is a healthy step above budget devices but still at a comfortable price-point for most consumers.

The Hasselblad True Zoom Moto Mod, as much as we want to love it, isn't as straightforward to recommend. At $250, it does not deliver the killer photography experience we expect. It does have significant utility, however. Any situation that can take advantage of the optical zoom will yield results that no other smartphone can currently compare to, and its experience is better than toting around a separate point-and-shoot camera as well. None-the-less, it does make us very eager to see what a second generation camera mod could bring us because there is so much potential for this functionality concept.

In the end, the Moto Z Play is a very well positioned phone for general consumers who just want their smartphone to work and power users who can get the most out of Moto Mods, alike. For that, we gladly give this phone a hearty recommendation.